and manifestly the most effectively dressed, in
her cloudy black net and daffodils. Her spirits rose with
a keen instinct that assured her she would win, if it
were only a matter of a race with _them_. She had never
had the feeling, in any security, before; it lifted her
and carried her on in a wave of exhilaration. Golightly
Ticke, taking her in turn to the buffet for lemonade and
a sandwich, told her that he knew she would enjoy it--she
must be enjoying it, she looked in such capital form. It
was the first time she had been near the buffet; so she
had not had the opportunity of observing how important
a feature the lemonade and sandwiches formed in the
entertainment of the evening--how persistently the
representatives of the arts, with varying numbers of
buttons off their gloves, returned to this light
refreshment.

Elfrida thanked Mrs. Tommy Morrow very sweetly for her
chaperonage in the cloak-room when the hour of departure
came. "Well," said Mrs. Morrow, "you can say you have
seen a characteristic London literary gathering."

"Yes, thanks!" said Elfrida; and then, looking about her
for a commonplace, "How much taller the women seem to be
than the men," she remarked.

"Yes," returned Mrs. Tommy Morrow, "Du Maurier drew
attention to that in _Punch_, some time ago."

CHAPTER XIII.

Janet Cardiff, running downstairs to the drawing-room
from the top story of the house in Kensington Square with
the knowledge that a new American girl, who wrote very
clever things about pictures, awaited her there, tried
to remember just what sort of description John Kendal
had given of her visitor. Her recollection was vague as
to detail; she could not anticipate a single point with
certainty, perhaps because she had not paid particular
attention at the time. She had been given a distinct
impression that she might expect to be interested, however,
which accounted for her running downstairs. Nothing
hastened Janet Cardiff's footsteps more than the prospect
of anybody interesting. She and her father declared that
it was their great misfortune to be thoroughly respectable,
it cut them off from so much. It was in particular the
girl's complaint against their life that humanity as they
knew it was rather a neutral-tinted, carefully woven
fabric too largely "machine-made," as she told herself,
with a discontent that the various Fellows of the Royal
Society and members of the Athenaeum Club, with whom the
Cardiffs were in th